China: Fun and Games

Word Parade- THE game of intense and competitive speed spelling.

It's my penultimate week of teaching so I've just been playing games!

Classes are HILARIOUS so I had share some stories.... People think classes of 60 would be a nightmare but it's actually really good as there's a huge crowd mentality, in fact, it's much easier playing games in class of 60 in China than a class of 9 in Fiji.

Guess the Word

Rules: 

• Teacher writes a word on the board, one student stands at the front and has to guess the word some help from everyone else.
• Speak English! (No Chinese.... or Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish etc.)
• No spelling
• No objects

My favourites...

Hu Jintao 

"CHINESE OBAMA!!"

"Wen Jiabao's friend!!"

Students with the family name "Hu" : "ME! My Father! My Uncle!!"

Hate

"dislike dislike!" Student guessing: "....Teachers?"

"We love *English teacher's name* but we really ______ *history teacher's name*

Lady Gaga

"Oh my .......!" ("Oh my Lady Gaga!" is a catchphrase in China)

"Him him him!!" (everyone points at a student who loves Gaga)

*class starts to sing Poker Face*

Mushroom

"YOUR HAIR!!!"

"English" Whispers

Rules:

• Each column is a team. 10 teams of 6.
• Teacher tells the back row the sentence, they must whisper till it gets to the front where the front row have to write what they've heard on the blackboard.
• Most accurate team wins!

They're all MASSIVE (+hilarious) cheaters. By the last round, they're literally screaming across the room to the front row or passing a written note along, It's pretty much anarchy and they're pushing each other off the blackboard.... doing victory dances after finishing writing first and generally a massive laugh!!

Chinese whispers in China.... is definitely not a whisper.

Having so much fun! :) Love love love love love China.

p.s I'm nowhere near the floods in China, but it's still raining a lot!!

Loving Life

TODAY:

• Woke up with a sore throat/cold.
• Taught 2 lessons at 7:40am in the morning to cover for another sick teacher.
• Crashed out after eating lunch.
• 2 timetabled lessons in the afternoon.
• 2 extra lessons this evening and have just got back to my dorm at 11pm.... AND I LOVE LIFE!!!!

I love my classes, I love my school, I love my colleagues... China is the absolute bomb and I can't get enough of everyone and everything. 

You'd think I'd be stressed or antisocial after 7am-11pm day, but all I can think about is how much fun I'm having. Standing in front of my classes is the best feeling! I love teaching them so much! I know my classes well and can tell them funny stories and they can confide in me. 

After teaching in the evening, my class asked me to stay and watch TV with them (they watch the news in their classrooms on Friday evenings) and a couple of students translated for me. I sat there for a while just thinking all I want to do is stay! If I could, I'd stay another term and just travel the expanses of SW China during the school holidays. I don't even want to go back to England inbetween the 2 terms! I absolutely love China and can't believe how quickly time has gone. I feel like I'm only just scratching the surface of life. I know I'll be back though!! I just hope it's as soon as possible!!

I've been showing photos and talking about Fiji/volunteering to my classes, most of them have never even left the province before so travel is such a big idea to them. It's felt pretty immense to have a few students come and tell me that before meeting a foreigner they never cared about learning English and never wanted to travel... but now they want to work abroad and learn more languages!

I love how relaxed everything is now... students showing me pet cicadas in the break time, not being scared to try out new English words in conversation with me and me.... finally having the confidence to speak Chinese with them!

I know I have to go back to England and go to University. Here's a video of my friend's first Anthropology lecture. Anthropology is probably the only degree that could reign me back in from all these travels, but I have a feeling nothing will ever match to this super, super amazing year. (My classes have just learnt the word "super" from their textbook this week, it now precedes EVERY word possible :) )

Only 26 days left of teaching :( ....but the best days EVER!

生日快乐！ Shengri Kuaile! (Happy Birthday)

Last weekend I celebrated my 19^th birthday in China with the other volunteers in the city... reminding me of how overdue a new blogpost is!

My actual birthday is the 23rd May and China made it a very memorable one indeed! My birthday fell  just over the 3 month mark of living here, so it was great reminder of just how settled I was in China.

At midnight I started getting texts from students who were still up in their dorms playing with their phones and my absolute favourite birthday message of the day goes to a fabulous student called Gin. He loves Lady Gaga and his message was…

CLASSIC!!! 

Amazing guy, tons of personality, he makes me laugh every day!

I then went to class the next day after a breakfast of “dan ta” (egg custard tarts!) where my class started to sing to me – first in English, then in Chinese! They drew a cake for me on the board hidden behind some paper and I couldn’t bring myself to rub it off, so I just drew around it the whole lesson! 

My volunteer partner Zoe had taken the liberty of writing this sign up the evening before whilst I was in our flat…

“Tomorrow is JiaoJiao (nickname from my Chinese name, Xiao Yunjiao) (Natalie’s) birthday. Please wish her a happy birthday!”

During English corner, some students came round our flat and I opened a parcel sent from my lovely friend Victoria from England. I shared out some of the chocolate, but the main present was this:

Possibly, the BEST present to have sent to a person in China! My students translated the message for me after laughing at my attempt at reading the characters and were very impressed with the present.

Then, Mona / Zhang Zhemei (one my students) pulled out a beautiful present!! Polka-dot wrapping paper with a big blue bow on top, the prettiest present I’ve ever received and the most suprising at that! I didn’t think any of my students would give me anything like this! It now sits on my bedside table here and I’ll definitely be bringing it back to England for my University desk.

A pencil holder with “My Neighbour Totoro” characters, a Japanese movie Mona and I both love.

In the evening, the English department changed their meetings around so that they could take me out on my birthday. After a banquet dinner, we went to KTV / Karaoke and where we had cake (and lots of singing!). Some of my foreign friends came too and I was lucky enough to hear happy birthday in Spanish (as well as Chinese / English!) from an Argentine friend who’s another English Teacher. We were back after midnight (where I found a bundle of birthday cards pushed under the door!) and I definitely feel I celebrated my 19^th in plenty of style (and thankfully, without too much 35% rice wine and Chinese beer).

Last but not least… Zoe’s present to me was an amazing book full of photos and messages from all my friends at Minzhong 民中 (National Minorities High School) and photos of all our little backpacker weekends away. The best present ever!!!!!!!!!

But there’s an amusing twist… the book she bought is hilariously a notebook for people learning a style of kung-fu that helps men become women. The first student who signed the book explained this to her and it was apparently of much amusement to everyone thereafter. Even after 3 months in China, you can definitely keep finding out new things!

A card from all the volunteers :)

We had a birthday celebration in the big city... people trekked 16 hour hard seat train journeys to get there!